Spend Matters 50/50: SpendHQ – A Provider to Know

Over the years, the Insight Sourcing Group has run sourcing analytics and services in a consultative fashion and along the way built a SaaS-delivered software solution (a.k.a. toolset) for spend visibility and category management, as well as data optimization services. Originally just for internal use as they worked with clients, this took on a life of its own as some of the Insight Sourcing Group's clients expressed interest in using it for themselves. It’s a natural step along the path of self-service that many organizations embark on. These days the tool is managed as an independent business – although under the same ownership as the Insight Sourcing Group.

Having been developed entirely by practitioners, the tool is exceedingly procurement and sourcing savvy in what it does, how it slices and dices the data, and serves up reports and dashboards. The tool doesn’t fall short from an IT perspective. Users can feed it fresh data on a monthly basis – if that suits their business model. Most clients stick to the typical quarterly or annual refresh cycle. To our knowledge, the frequency is an area to think through – the cleanses get better and better the more often you do them: the inevitable exception reviews are smaller, and the schemas get polished each time you run something through them. Price-wise you can expect substantial discounts per data cleanse as you increase the frequency. It’s a discussion well worth taking to the negotiation table.

Regarding whom this solution is for, we think anyone at the business unit level should take a look at the tool. It’s a quick path to identifying savings opportunities, and SpendHQ (coupled with their consultants at the sister company Insight Sourcing Group, if needed) can guide you along the way. It’s important for those starting out in the area of more sophisticated spend analysis and useful for the big corporate users. Feed it with any amount of ERP systems or other data sources (e.g. p-card data) and the tool will handle that too. SpendHQ has a sweet spot client in the $1-10 billion revenue range – but has gone all the way up to $60-billion organizations as well as down to quarter-million firms.